I am on a ski trip in Colorado and when I was about 20 miles from the ski lodge my truck started acting kind of funny. I am running the spartan 165 tune with 4 inch exhaust and s&b intake cover off. It start to lug down at low Rpms and would shake a little bit I could hear it sucking alot of air. If I would manually down shift it would pull out of it and run normal.I switched to the 40 hp tune and seems to have fixed the problem but has still does it a little bit. I am thinking it has something to do with the high altitude/thin air. Suggestions?

Mine did this the other day and I am in Texas. It feels like it needs to down shift from six but it doesn't do it. I had slowed down to about 40mph but the truck stayed in 6th until I got back on the gas.

I had this problem on my 2003 6.0L When I got up to higher elevation there was sensor that senses the Barometric pressure and would tell the turbo just how much pressure it could build based on that reading.

I suspect either you have a similar sensor go bad or the Spartan is not reading that sensors output. I suggest you just return it to stock hp for the ski trip and then retry the higher settings when you are back at normal elevation settings.

I have had the same issue at resorts around Lake Tahoe. Also got a P0069 code on my last trip, the factory boost meter read 40psi but my tuner was reading about 2, it deffinately wasnt making 40 psi it idk why it thought it was.

I did not have any codes that showed. I am back home now and truck ran great the whole way home. I am going to change to the higher tune tomorrow. I think it had something to do with the tune/the cover off the air intake. The noise it made was like we you are full throttle on a truck and then let off quickly. It reminded me of the sound that my 6.4 turbos made when I did that. I am still not sure exactly what was the issue.

Compressor surge. Tune needed less fuel, less vane position, or a downshift under those conditions.

Writing a performance tune that works well at high altitude is difficult and really needs to be done at altitude.
I have a tune I wrote for my 6.4 for this summer's trip to Colorado because I was definitely having to "drive around" the canned H&S tuning. 5000ft is bad enough, but when you're talking 8-12k? It's a whole different ballgame

I have had no problems since. Truck is running great and I have tried several different tunes latley. I just got the new spartan tunes and they are awesome. I used to run the 165 tune, but with the updated tunes I really like the 200. They shift sooo such smoother now!!!!

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the Ford Powerstroke Diesel Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.